Recounts the fake news stories, written from 1830 to 1880, about scientific and technological discoveries, and the effect these hoaxes had on readers and their trust in science.

Lynda Walsh explores a provocative era in American history—the proliferation of fake news stories about scientific and technological discoveries from 1830 to 1880. These hoaxes, which fooled thousands of readers, offer a first-hand look at an intriguing guerilla tactic in the historical struggle between arts and sciences in America. Focusing on the hoaxes of Richard Adams Locke, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, and Dan De Quille, the author combines rhetorical hermeneutics, linguistic pragmatics, and reader-response theory to answer three primary questions: How did the hoaxes work? What were the hoaxers trying to accomplish? And—what is a hoax?

“Its careful examination of contemporary reader reactions to the hoaxes provides concrete evidence for what people actually believed—thus attesting very specifically to the nineteenth-century ‘assumptions about the real world’ that were being ‘called into question’ by the hoaxes … impressively wide range of historical and theoretical resources are brought to bear on these ‘acts of reading.’ All of this is woven into a rich and nuanced account of what we stand to gain—in terms of understanding the past—by taking seriously a handful of little known jests.” — The Edgar Allen Poe Review

“I found the book to be quite informative, not only as a technical exploration concerned with how readers interact with texts that promulgate hoaxes, but also as a work providing helpful glimpses of the emerging roles of science and media in this period.” — Thomas M. Lessl, The University of Georgia

“As Walsh points out, there is no extended analysis of hoaxes in the rhetoric of science, and her book shows how important hoaxes are in understanding the history of professionalized science as it emerged in the United States. The relationship of science and the the public is of utmost importance in science studies, and the author has identified a key source of historical information about this relationship.” — Ellen Barton, coeditor of Discourse Studies in Composition

Lynda Walsh is Assistant Professor of English at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.

The Search for a Method: The Traditional and Philological Genealogies of Linguistic Approaches to Literature
Optimality Theory
A Brief Tutorial: Optimality Theory for Reception Studies

3. Poe’s Hoaxing and the Construction of Readerships

Overview of Poe’s Scientific and Rhetorical Acculturation
The Contest between “Hans Phaall” and Locke’s Moon Hoax: Revealing Reader Expectations
Collecting Reader Expectations
The Balloon-Hoax
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
Von Kempelen and His Discovery
Solutions to Problems in Poe Scholarship
Poe’s Relationship to Science and to His Readership: How the Hoaxes Interact with Eureka

4. Mark Twain and the Social Mechanics of Laughter

Rhetorical Acculturation
Scientific Acculturation
The Petrified Man
Adjusting the Filter of Expectations to Account for Twain’s Hoaxing
Applying the Analysis to Problems in Twain Scholarship
Relationship of the Hoax to Twain’s Scientific Thinking
The Social Mechanics of Laughter

5. The Hoaxes of Dan De Quille: Building and Defending the West

Rhetorical Acculturation
Scientific Acculturation
De Quille’s Hoaxes
Summary of Reading Expectations Based on De Quille’s Hoaxes
De Quille’s Hoaxes Build and Defend His Ideal West

6. The Mechanics of Hoaxing

How Did the Hoaxes Work?
The Hoax as a Machine

Conclusion

Conclusion: The Sokal Hoax

Exploiting the Conventions of the Cultural Studies Article
Sokal’s Hoax Constructs Him as a Notorious Expert
The Hoax as a Computer Virus

Appendix A: How to Read Tables in Optimality Theory (OT)

What the Parts of the Table Mean
The Results of the Syllabification of /Anset/
Optimality Theory Applied to a Decision about a Hoax’s Truth-Value